The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Quasar Catalog: twelfth data release

Isabelle Pâris (1) , Patrick Petitjean , Nicholas P. Ross , Adam D. Myers , Éric Aubourg (2) , Alina Streblyanska , Stephen Bailey , Éric Armengaud (3) , Nathalie Palanque-Delabrouille (3) , Christophe Yèche (3) , Fred Hamann , Michael A. Strauss , Franco D. Albareti , Jo Bovy , Dmitry Bizyaev , W. Niel Brandt , Marcella Brusa , Johannes Buchner , Johan Comparat , Rupert A. C. Croft , Tom Dwelly , Xiaohui Fan , Andreu Font-Ribera , Jian Ge , Antonis Georgakakis , Patrick B. Hall , Linhua Jian , Karen Kinemuchi , Elena Malanushenko , Viktor Malanushenko , Richard G. Mcmahon , Marie-Luise Menzel , Andrea Merloni , Kirpal Nandra , Pasquier Noterdaeme , Daniel Oravetz , Kaike Pan , Matthew M. Pieri (1) , Francisco Prada , Mara Salvato , David J. Schlegel , Donald P. Schneider , Audrey Simmons , Matteo Viel (1) , David H. Weinberg , Liu Zhu

1 LAM - Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille
2 APC (UMR_7164) - AstroParticule et Cosmologie
3 DPhP - Département de Physique des Particules (ex SPP)

We present the Data Release 12 Quasar catalog (DR12Q) from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III. This catalog includes all SDSS-III/BOSS objects that were spectroscopically targeted as quasar candidates during the full survey and that are confirmed as quasars via visual inspection of the spectra, have luminosities M_i [z = 2] (in a LambdaCDM cosmology with H_0 = 70 km s^-1 Mpc^-1, Omega_M = 0.3, and Omega_Lambda = 0.7), and either display at least one emission line with a full width at half maximum (FWHM) larger than 500 km s^-1 or, if not, have interesting/complex absorption features. The catalog also includes previously known quasars (mostly from SDSS-I and II) that were reobserved by BOSS. The catalog contains 297301 quasars (272026 are new discoveries since the beginning of SDSS-III) detected over 9376 deg^2 with robust identification and redshift measured by a combination of principal component eigenspectra. The number of quasars with z > 2.15 (184101, of which 167742 are new discoveries) is about an order of magnitude greater than the number of z > 2.15 quasars known prior to BOSS. Redshifts and FWHMs are provided for the strongest emission lines (C iv, C iii], Mg ii). The catalog identifies 29580 broad absorption line quasars and lists their characteristics. For each object, the catalog presents five-band (u, g, r, i, z) CCD-based photometry with typical accuracy of 0.03 mag together with some information on the optical morphology and the selection criteria. When available, the catalog also provides information on the optical variability of quasars using SDSS and Palomar Transient Factory multi-epoch photometry. The catalog also contains X-ray, ultraviolet, near-infrared, and radio emission properties of the quasars, when available, from other large-area surveys. The calibrated digital spectra, covering the wavelength region 3600-10500 A/ at a spectral resolution in the range 1300 , can be retrieved from the SDSS Catalog Archive Server. We also provide a supplemental list of an additional 4841 quasars that have been identified serendipitously outside of the superset defined to derive the main quasar catalog.

Mots clés: quasars: general; surveys; catalogs

Domaines: Astrophysique [astro-ph]

Isabelle Pâris, Patrick Petitjean, Nicholas P. Ross, Adam D. Myers, Éric Aubourg, et al.. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Quasar Catalog: twelfth data release. Astronomy and Astrophysics - A&A, 2017, 597, pp.A79. ⟨10.1051/0004-6361/201527999⟩. ⟨hal-01582686⟩